Entries in Abandon
(2)

Comstock/Thinkstock(SCHAUMBURG, Ill.) -- A newborn baby girl was found Sunday, apparently abandoned, at Gospel Presbyterian Church in Schaumburg, Ill., a suburb northwest of Chicago.

According to Sgt. John Nebl, public information officer at Schaumburg Police Department, just after 2 p.m. a member of the church said he found a green reusable canvas shopping bag on the trunk of his car. He noticed a teddy bear and a blanket or towel inside, and thought someone had left the bag by accident, so he took it into the church and left it on a table in the foyer.

Thirty minutes to an hour later, someone heard sounds coming from the bag and looked inside.

“We found a reddish color bath towel totally wrapped around the baby,” Bob Song, a church elder, told ABC-7 Chicago. “So I unwrapped the baby towel, and it was a very healthy looking baby.” Church members called the police and fire departments.

The baby is at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in nearby Elk Grove Village, Nebl said. Doctors said she appeared to be two days old and in good condition, weighing 7 pounds. They thought she was full-term and that she was likely not born in a hospital, given the length of her unclamped umbilical cord, Nebl said.

When the hospital deems her ready to leave, the baby will enter the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, according to the state’s Safe Haven Law. The law allows parents to relinquish babies 30 days or younger to hospitals, police departments, fire stations or emergency medical facilities.

If the mother is identified, she could be charged with neglect, Nebl said, but he emphasized the authorities’ main goal was “to determine if mom is healthy, physically and mentally, and make sure she was not coerced into anything. Then, based on the totality of the case, she would be charged or not.”

Anyone with information about the baby and/or her parents is encouraged to call Schaumburg Police Department at 847-882-3534.

Photo Courtesy - Getty Images(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) -- A Craigslist advertisement with a graphic photo of a newborn and a threat to abandon the baby in a trash can has Colorado police both hunting for a possibly desperate teenage mother and investigating whether the ad could be a hoax.

"Desperate baby will die if someone doesn't pick it up," the advertisement's headline screamed in capital letters when it was flagged by a Craigslist user and sent to Colorado Springs police last week.

The ad contained a picture of the baby on what looks like blue surgical dressing, still covered in after-birth with the umbilical cord attached.

"I'm a teenare (sic) mother who was kicked out from my moms and dads house because i was pregnant 9 months ago," the ad read. "i have just given birth and i don't know what to do with the baby,my bf will put it in the trashcan right in front of the apartments so somone can pick it up."

"I JUST DON"T KNOW WHAT TO DO!!!" the ad read. "please help my baby."

Noblitt said police were investigating the ad within 20 minutes of it being posted and immediately sent officers to the address provided on Craiglist. But they did not find an abandoned baby anywhere in the neighborhood.

"We checked all the trash cans and Dumpsters," he said.

They also traced the IP address from which the ad was posted, but the couple living at the corresponding home had no involvement and told police that they had been using an unlocked Wi-Fi signal, meaning anyone nearby could have used it to acces the Internet.

Three days later, on Monday, they were made aware of a second advertisement that again said a baby would be abandoned, this time in a park. Again, a police search turned up nothing.

"This ad, though, we don't know if it's connected to the first or what," Noblitt said. "It had the smell of maybe a copycat, but who knows."

"Bottom line," he said, "we went there and there was no baby."

Both cases have been turned over to the Colorado Springs Police Department's Internet Crimes Against Children Unit to be investigated as both a real threat and a hoax.

"It's our responsibility to treat it as if it's real," he said. "If we don't, we're not doing our jobs."